Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome

Written by Rodney Stark

Narrated by Bob Souer

How did the preaching of a peasant carpenter from Galilee spark a movement that would grow to include over two billion followers? Who listened to this "good news," and who ignored it? Where did Christianity spread, and how? Based on quantitative data and the latest scholarship, preeminent scholar and journalist Rodney Stark presents new and startling information about the rise of the early church, overturning many prevailing views of how Christianity grew through time to become the largest religion in the world.

Drawing on both archaeological and historical evidence, Stark is able to provide hard statistical evidence on the religious life of the Roman Empire to discover the facts that set conventional history on its head.

By analyzing concrete data, Stark is able to challenge the conventional wisdom about early Christianity offering the clearest picture ever of how this religion grew from its humble beginnings into the faith of more than one-third of the earth's population.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: May 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781705212561

Rodney Stark

Rodney Stark is one of the leading authorities on the sociology of religion. Stark has authored more than 150 scholarly articles and 32 books in 17 different languages, including several widely used sociology textbooks and best-selling titles. William Sims Bainbridge earned his doctorate in sociology from Harvard University in 1975. Altogether he has published about 300 articles and written or edited 40 books in a variety of scientific fields.

Reviews for Cities of God

[Mark Kolt · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Although the author is given to pontificating a little more than is seemly (particularly in the epilogue), I found his analysis of this important but too little understood period of the rise of Christianity useful and informative. He is moreover quite right that many historians are quite content to use any ambiguity as springboards for speculation of all types, and that it is a healthy thing to try to sort things out with quantitative data, when available.

[peter uhlmann · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I found this book very Relevant to much of today’ world